Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [86]
Mexico is being hammered by climate change. The northern half of the country is in the grips of the worst drought in sixty years, while the southeastern areas are being deluged. A recent study found that for every 10 percent decrease in crop yields, 2 percent more Mexicans will leave for the United States. The same study projects that 10 percent of the current population of Mexicans aged fifteen to sixty-five could attempt to emigrate north as a result of rising temperatures.7
The year 2010 saw more freakish weather: rains destroyed much of the bean harvest in the Pacific Coast states of Nayarit and Sinaloa; rivers burst their banks and flooded crops in Michoacán. Hurricane Alex soaked northeastern Mexico, killing at least thirty people and destroying crops. Mass flooding hit Tabasco for the second time in four years; in 2007, floodwaters inundated 80 percent of that state.8
Migration
In 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that “the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration.” Increased storms, droughts, flooding, proliferation of pathogens, and rising seas will wreak havoc upon the world’s urbanized coastlines and agricultural economies. This suggests a future in which millions of people will be on the move. A one-meter rise in sea level—almost certain by the century’s end, barring some strange intervention by Mother Nature, like a radical solar minimum—will inundate terrain currently housing about 10 percent of the world’s population. Many other people living far from the sea, on semiarid agricultural lands, will be unable to adapt and forced to move.
In this light, the US-Mexico border becomes a template for understanding dangerous global dynamics. All over the world, borders and policing regimes are hardening as restrictive immigration policies are matched by a xenophobic style of politics.
By 2050 global population is expected to peak at 9 billion, and global temperatures are likely be close to 2°C hotter than today, or more. How many environmental refugees will there be? A report from the International Migration Organization was realistic about the uncertainties, noting, “Current estimates range between 25 million and 1 billion people by 2050.” The report also explained that “as is already the case with political refugees, it is likely that the burden of providing for climate migrants will be borne by the poorest countries—those least responsible for emissions of greenhouse gases.”9
Britain’s 2006 Stern Review estimated that between 200 and 250 million people would be uprooted by climate change. That is 10 times the current number of refugees in the world.10 Let that sink in for a moment. Bangladeshi academic Atiq Rahman had it correct when he warned, “Millions of people will be moving. No amount of nuclear submarines will be able to stop that.”11 Another report estimated there are 214 million international migrants in the world today. “If this number continues to grow at the same pace as during the last 20 years, international migrants could number 405 million by 2050.”12
Migration unfolds in a series of knock-on effects that mask causal relationships. In poor countries, it is not necessarily the poorest and hardest hit who migrate the first and furthest. “The ability to migrate is a function of mobility and resources (both financial and social). In other words, the people most vulnerable to climate change are not necessarily the ones most likely to migrate.”13
Here the catastrophic convergence reveals itself again: the climate crisis adds its propellant power to the already unfolding, highly destructive legacy of neoliberalism and Cold War military adventures. Climate change acts as an additional causal factor in shaping already-established migration flows. And in the face of rising migration, the borders between wealthy core economies and the developing world harden and militarize. 14
Who Is a Climate Migrant?
On the south bank